#286: The Conspirators
Wish.com Casablanca
This review was originally posted to Twitter on July 2, 2020.
Initial release: October 24, 1944
Director: Jean Negulesco
While Casablanca was only a modest success when it was new, it eventually became an all-time classic over the following decades. Jean Negulesco — mostly known for his film noirs — would reunite most of the supporting cast (some of whom, like Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, were frequent collaborators anyway) for 1944’s The Conspirators, but despite its pedigree, the film in no danger of being a classic anytime soon.
The Conspirators opens in the Netherlands, as a Dutch resistance fighter wages a one-man war on the Nazi regime. He’s single-handedly caused so much destruction there’s a price on his head, and so he’s shipped off to England by way of Lisbon. When he arrives, he promptly becomes infatuated with a strange woman who sits down across from him at a restaurant to hide from the local police. In between meeting with his contacts, he spends much of his time trying to get this woman’s attention. She’s not having it for a variety of reasons, but he won’t take no for an answer. Eventually it’s clear that she actually is into him, but is afraid to get involved, both because she’s married to a German official, and because she’s also in the resistance and neither of the men know it. In the back half of the film, he is framed for murder by a traitor in the local resistance circle, and after a daring escape, he must find a way to clear his name as well as find the traitor who’s really responsible for the murder.
I’m not going to say this film is unwatchable. But it isn’t good. The cast, which includes Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid, are all in top form, but the romance storyline, the driving force of the film, is nothing short of execrable. More interesting is the murder mystery, which takes a large chunk of the film’s runtime to get going, and how the resistance uses a local casino to flush out the traitor. If the film had excised the romance and focused entirely on the film noir elements, it would have worked.
It’s not all bad. Negulesco was a competent director who had an eye for interesting cinematography to really give a sense of place; the shots of the casino interiors almost put the ones in Casablanca to shame. The score is actually quite good, unusual even; Max Steiner (who scored King Kong and Casablanca) brought his talents to bear to give this film a stand-out score that helps lift sometimes dreary scenes. Ultimately, though, there’s no saving that script. It’s a turd.
This film is worth watching mostly for Lorre and Greenstreet; they make the best of a bad situation and steal every scene they’re in, Greenstreet especially, playing a more subdued version of the character he usually brings to these kinds of productions.
This is more or less a discount Casablanca that lacks most of the charm of that film or the watchability. Casablanca’s cishet romance is of the bittersweet kind, fraught with emotion and regrets. Here it’s just creepy.
